And singing a song over the waters of the well and giving thanks in the gifts of God, they prophesy whither they are to pass and to what places they are to come, namely that from the wilderness they come to Matthana, which is interpreted 'gift,' and from Matthana to Nahalihel, which is called 'the torrents of God,' and from Nahalihel to Bamoth, which is interpreted 'high places' or 'oncoming death,' when we are made conformable to the death of Christ, and from Bamoth there meets us 'the valley of humility,' which nevertheless is set on the summit of Mount Phasga, which is interpreted 'hewn,' because it has nothing shapeless and rough, but is polished by the hand of the craftsman—which mountain looks upon the wilderness, which in Hebrew is called Isimun.
For when we have been set on the summit of the virtues, then we look upon the ruins of the whole world and the 'devastation' of all sinners. We had almost forgotten, in the running course of our discourse, to dictate that Dibon-Gad is interpreted 'temptation bravely understood.' After Dibon-Gad war is waged against Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and we learn that, when we have come to the summit and have drunk from the fount of princes and kings, ascending to Mount Phasga we ought not to be lifted up into pride, but should know the wilderness set over against us on the contrary side. 'For before contrition the heart of a man is exalted, and before glory it is humbled.' 'And setting out from Dibon-Gad they pitched camp in Almon-Deblathaim.'
The fortieth station is rendered 'the contempt of dainties' or 'of reproaches.' And through this we learn that all sweet things and the allurements of pleasures in the world are to be despised, nor ought we to be inebriated with wine, wherein is luxury. Honey is not offered in the sacrifices of God, and wax, which contains sweet things, does not give light in the tabernacle, but the purest oil, which is brought forth from the bitterness of the olive. For honey distills from the lips of the harlot woman; of which I think, according to the mystical meanings, Jonathan tasted, and, being caught by lot, was scarcely freed by the prayers of the people. But that reproaches are to be despised and, if falsely brought against us, bring forth blessedness, the Savior most fully teaches.
'And setting out from Almon-Deblathaim they pitched camp in the mountains of Abarim, over against the face of Nabo.' The forty-first station is rendered the mountains 'of those passing over,' and it is over against the face of Mount Nabo, where Moses dies and is buried, the land of promise having been beheld before him. Nabo is interpreted 'conclusion,' in which the law is ended and no memory of it is found; but the grace of the Gospel is stretched forth without any end. 'Their sound went out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.' And at the same time consider that the dwelling of those passing over is set in the mountains and still needs advance. For after very many mountains we go down to the plains of Moab and the streams of the Jordan, which is interpreted 'descent.'
For nothing, as we have often said, is so perilous as the lust for glory and boastfulness and a mind swollen with the awareness of its own virtues. And setting out from the mountains of Abarim they pitched camp in the plains of Moab beside the Jordan over against Jericho, and there they fixed their tents from the House of the Wilderness as far as Abel-Shittim in the plain of Moab. In the forty-second and last encampment let us swiftly recount what was done there. The people, dwelling in it, are blessed by the command of God through the seer Balaam, whom Balak, son of Zippor, had hired for a fee, and the curse is turned into praise. He hears the words of the Lord resounding from a profane mouth: 'A star shall arise out of Jacob, and a man shall spring up out of Israel;'
and he shall smite the princes of Moab and lay waste all the sons of Seth, and Edom shall be his inheritance. The people commit fornication with the daughters of Midian, and Phinehas, son of Eleazar, being zealous with the zeal of the Lord, transfixes Zimri and the Midianite harlot with a single dagger; wherefore he received as his reward the belly of the victim in everlasting remembrance. The people are numbered again, so that, when the worst have been slain, a new people of God may be reckoned. The five daughters of Zelophehad plead their cause, and by the judgment of the Lord they receive an inheritance among their brothers, nor is the female sex shut out from the possession of God. Joshua succeeds Moses on the mountain and learns from the Law what he must offer spiritually in the Church:
first, what he must offer on each single day, then what on the Sabbath, what on the new moons, what at Pentecost, what on the new moon of the seventh month, what in the fast on the tenth day of that same month, what at the Feast of Tabernacles, when the booths are set up, on the fifteenth day of the aforesaid month. The vows of wives and daughters, made without the authority of their fathers and husbands, are recorded as void. Then comes the war against the Midianites, the death of the seer Balaam, the division of the spoil, and the offering from it in the tabernacle of God. First Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh receive their possession on this side of the Jordan in the desert; for they had very many cattle, and they had not yet come to the point where they could dwell with the temple.
The people are taught that in the Holy Land they must destroy the idols and that none of the former inhabitants shall be preserved. The province long desired is described, and the inheritance of the two and a half tribes is set apart. The princes of the tribes who are to enter the Holy Land are numbered. The Levites receive forty-two cities with their suburbs extending a thousand paces round about, as many in number as these encampments are. And there are added six other cities of refuge for fugitives, three within the Jordan and three beyond the Jordan, so that together there are forty-eight; and it is laid down which of the fugitives are to be received, which to be put to death, and who are to be kept until the death of the high priest. Then follows Deuteronomy, the second law, the foreshadowing of the Gospel:
and there in brief we learn what things Moses spoke to the people between Paran and Tophel and Laban and Hazeroth and the places of gold—unhappy Judah having been cast off—eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir as far as Kadesh-barnea, and how he sings his last song. In it the synagogue is most plainly cast out and the Church is joined to the Lord: 'He grew fat and thick and broad, and the beloved kicked, and forgot God his Saviour.' And again: 'A most wicked generation, undisciplined children, they have provoked me to jealousy with that which is no god; they have provoked me with their graven images; and I too will make them jealous with those who are no nation, and will provoke them with a foolish people.'
The children of Israel are blessed, and again in Simeon the wretched Judah is excluded. Moses ascends to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is over against Jericho, and the Lord shows him all the land of Gilead as far as Dan and Naphtali and Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah as far as the Great Sea toward the south, and the plain region of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar. Who is able to know such great mysteries?
Who, being set at the very ends of the Law and of this life, understands that he must always be fighting, and that full victory is then granted, if he shall be in the plains, if in Abel-Shittim, which is interpreted 'the mourning of thorns,' he shall have bewept his ancient sins and the thorns which choked the seed of the word of God, and of which the prophet says, 'I was turned in my anguish, while the thorn was fastened in me'; and then, prepared, when the manna fails, under the leadership of Jesus he may cross the Jordan and, circumcised with the knife of the Gospel, first eat of the heavenly bread, and the prince of the host of God may meet him, that he may eat the true Passover by no means in Egypt, but in the borders of the Holy Land?
O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! Who is wise and shall understand these things, prudent and shall know them? For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them, but transgressors shall fall in them. LETTER 79. TO SALVINA. I fear lest my office be thought ambition, and lest, in doing what we do after the example of him who said, 'Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart,' we be said to act from a craving for glory—not to be addressing a widow set in her affliction, but to be insinuating ourselves into the royal court and, under the pretext of a discourse, seeking the friendships of the powerful. But he will plainly not think this who knows that the precept has been given:
'You shall not accept the person of the poor in judgment,' lest under the pretext of mercy we judge what is unjust. For each one of us is to be judged not by the weight of men but of things. Riches do not harm the rich man if he uses them well, nor does want make the poor man more commendable, if amid his squalor and destitution he does not guard against sins. Both the patriarch Abraham and daily examples supply us with testimony of each; of these the one, in the highest riches, was the friend of God, while others, caught daily in their crimes, pay the penalties appointed by the laws. We are addressing, then—a poor woman or a rich? Let her herself know what she possesses;
for we do not examine her purse, but the purity of her soul—we are speaking to her whose face we do not know but whose virtues we know, whom report commends to us, whose chastity her youth makes the more venerable, who so bewept the death of her young husband that she gave an example of wedlock, and so bore it that she believed him to have gone before, not to be lost. The greatness of her bereavement became the occasion of her religion. She so seeks her Nebridius that she knows him to be present in Christ. Why then do we write to her whom we do not know? The cause is threefold: the first, that by the duty of our priesthood we love all Christians in the place of children, and their advancement is our glory; the second, that the father of the deceased was bound to me by the closest intimacy;
the last, and the more compelling, that I could deny nothing to my son Avitus when he asked, who, overcoming with frequent letters my objection like that of a hard judge, and setting before me the examples of many to whom I had previously written on the same subject, so put to shame my refusal that I considered more what he desired than what it was fitting for me to do. Another perhaps may praise Nebridius, that, born of a sister of the Empress and nurtured in the bosom of his aunt, he was so dear to the most invincible prince that he sought for him a most noble wife, and by this pledge, as it were, rendered Africa, torn by civil wars, faithful to himself.
For my part, this must be proclaimed from the very outset: that, as though foreknowing his death soon to come, amid the splendour of the palace and the summit of honours which outran his years, he so lived that he believed himself about to set out to Christ. Sacred history tells of Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian cohort, so accepted by God that he sent an angel to him, and that the whole mystery whereby Peter was transferred from the narrowness of circumcision to the breadth of the uncircumcision should pertain to the merits of him who, first baptized by the apostle, consecrated the salvation of the Gentiles. And it is written of him:
'There was a certain man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of the cohort which is called Italian, religious and fearing God with all his house, giving many alms to the people and always praying to God.' Whatever is said of him, I claim for my Nebridius by changing that name. He was so religious and a lover of chastity that he obtained a virgin for his wife; so fearing God with his whole house that, forgetful of his rank, he had all fellowship with monks and clergy, and gave such great alms among the people that swarms of the poor and the crippled besieged his doors; and assuredly he always so prayed to God that whatever was best might befall him. He was snatched away, lest malice should alter his mind, because his soul was pleasing to God.
Wherefore I too may truly apply to him the words of the apostle who says: 'In truth I have perceived that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that fears God and works righteousness is accepted with him.' The soldier's cloak and belt and the throngs of attendants did him no harm as he served, because under the garb of one he was serving another—just as, on the contrary, the cheap little cloak, the dark tunic, the filth of the body, and feigned poverty profit others nothing, if by their works they destroy the dignity of the name. We read also in the Gospel the Lord's testimony concerning another centurion: 'I have not found so great a faith in Israel.'
And to return to what is above: did not Joseph, who both in want and in riches gave proofs of his virtues, who as slave and as lord taught the freedom of the soul, become, after Pharaoh, adorned with the insignia of a king, so dear to God that above all the patriarchs he became the father of two tribes? Daniel and the three young men so presided over the works of Babylonia and were among the princes of the city that in the garb of Nebuchadnezzar they served God in mind. Mordecai and Esther, amid purple, silk, and gems, overcame pride by humility, and were of such great merit that as captives they gave commands to their conquerors.
This discourse tends to this end: that I may show that my young man had in the union of royal blood, the affluence of riches, and the insignia of power the material of virtues, as Ecclesiastes says: 'As wisdom is a protection, so also money is a protection.' Nor let us at once think that saying opposed to this testimony: 'Amen I say to you, hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.' Otherwise Zacchaeus the publican, whom Scripture records as most wealthy, will seem to have been saved against this sentence. But how what is impossible with men may become possible with God, the counsel of the apostle teaches, writing to Timothy:
'Charge the rich of this world not to be high-minded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who gives us all things abundantly to enjoy. Let them do good, be rich in good works, give readily, share, laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold on the true life.' We have learned how the camel can enter through the eye of the needle, how the crooked animal, laying aside the weight of its burdens, may take to itself the wings of a dove, that it may rest on the boughs of the tree which grew up from the mustard seed. We read in Isaiah of the camels of Midian and Ephah and Sheba carrying gold and frankincense to the city of the Lord;
in the type of these camels the Ishmaelite merchants bring down to the Egyptians myrrh, spice, and the resin which grows in Gilead and covers wounds with a skin, and are of such felicity that they buy and sell Joseph, and their merchandise is the salvation of the world. Aesop's fable too teaches that a mouse with a belly full cannot get out through a narrow hole. Therefore my Nebridius, daily turning over that saying, 'They who wish to become rich fall into temptation and into the snare of the devil and many desires,' bestowed upon the uses of the poor whatever the emperor's largess and the badges of honour had given him. For he knew that it had been commanded by the Lord: 'If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me.'
And because he could not fulfil this sentence, having a wife and little children and a large household, he made himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, who might receive him into the eternal tabernacles. He did not once and for all cast off the burden, as the apostles did in leaving their father and their net and their little boat, but out of equality he shared his abundance with the want of others, so that afterward their riches might sustain his own indigence. She herself, for whom this little book is written, knows that I narrate things not seen but heard, and that I do not, after the manner of Greek writers, render the grace of language in return for some benefit toward me. Far from Christians be that suspicion. Having food and clothing, with these we are content.
Where there is a cheap little herb and coarse bread and moderate food and drink, there riches are superfluous, there is no flattery, which especially looks to profit. From which it is gathered that a testimony which has no reasons for lying is trustworthy. And lest anyone think that I proclaim in Nebridius his almsgiving alone—although to have practised even this were a great thing, of which it is said, 'As water quenches fire, so alms quench sin'—I will come to his other virtues, which we detect in but few men one by one. Who has entered the furnace of the king of Babylon without being scorched? Whose cloak did the Egyptian mistress not hold onto in his youth? What wife of a eunuch bears no children when pleasure has been spent? Whom does that disputation of men not terrify:
'I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive under the law of sin which is in my members'? It is wondrous to tell: nurtured in the palace, the messmate and fellow-pupil of the Augusti—whose tables the world serves, and earth and seas obey—amid the abundance of all things, in the first flower of his age he was of such great modesty that he surpassed maidenly bashfulness and gave not even a slight rumour of obscene talk about himself.
Then, kinsman, associate, and cousin of the purple-clad, and instructed in the same studies as both of them—a thing that wins over to itself even the minds of strangers—he was not puffed up into pride, nor did he despise other men with a frowning brow, but, lovable to all, he loved the princes themselves as brothers, revered them as lords, and confessed that his own salvation lay in their safety. Their ministers, too, and the whole order of the palace, by which royal state is attended, he had so joined to himself in charity that those who were deservedly his inferiors reckoned themselves his equals in his courtesies. It is a difficult thing to surpass glory by virtue and to be loved by those whom you go before. What widow was not sustained by his help? What orphan did not find in him a father?
The bishops of the whole East brought to him the prayers of the wretched and the desires of the labouring. Whatever he asked of the emperor was alms for the poor, ransom for captives, mercy for the afflicted. Whence the princes themselves gladly granted it, because they knew that it was bestowed not on one but on many. Why do we delay further? All flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of grass. The earth returned to its own earth: he slept in the Lord and was gathered to his fathers, full of days and of light, and nurtured in a good old age—for the wisdom of a man is his grey hairs—and in a brief span he fulfilled many seasons. In his stead we hold his most sweet children; the wife is heir to the reward of chastity;
little Nebridius presents his father to those who seek him: such were his eyes, such his hands, such the countenance he bore. The spark of his father's vigour shines in the son, and the likeness of his character bursts forth through the mirror of the flesh: he turns mighty spirits in a narrow breast. To him is joined his own sister, a basket of roses and lilies, a commerce of ivory and purple. She so reflects the father in her face that she inclines the more to loveliness; she so paints the mother with a blended likeness that in one body you may recognize both; she is so sweet and honeyed that she is the honour of all her kindred. Augustus does not disdain to hold her, the queen rejoices to cherish her in her bosom. All snatch her to themselves in rivalry: she hangs on the neck, she clings in the arms of each.
Prattling and lisping, she is made sweeter by the stumbling of her tongue. You have therefore, Salvina, those whom you may nurture, in whom you may believe you hold your absent husband. Behold, the inheritance of the Lord is children, the reward the fruit of the womb. For one man you have received two children; the number of your love is increased. Whatever you owed to your husband, render to the children; temper the longing for the absent by love of those present. It is no small thing before God to bring up children well. Hear the apostle admonishing: 'Let a widow be chosen of not less than sixty years, who has been the wife of one husband, having testimony in good works, if she has brought up children, if she has been hospitable, if she has washed the feet of the saints, if she has abundantly supplied the afflicted, if she has followed after every good work.'
You have learned the catalogue of your virtues, what you owe to your name, by what merits you may possess the second grade of chastity. Nor let it move you that a widow of sixty is to be chosen, and think that younger women are rejected by the apostle and chosen by him who had said to his disciple, 'Let no one despise your youth'—it is not continence but age that he means. Otherwise all who have been widowed before sixty years will by this law take husbands. But because he was instructing the Church of Christ, still untrained, and provided for every order, and especially for the poor, whose care had been entrusted to him with Barnabas, he wishes those to be sustained by the resources of the Church who cannot labour with their own hands, who are truly widows, whom both age and life have approved.
Eli the priest offended God because of the vices of his children: therefore, on the contrary, God is appeased by their virtues, if they abide in faith and love and holiness with chastity. 'O Timothy, keep yourself chaste.' Far be it that I should be permitted to suspect anything sinister concerning you; but it is a mark of piety to have admonished, out of an abundance of caution, a slippery age. What I am about to say, understand as spoken not to you, but to youthful years. 'A widow who lives in pleasures is dead while living.' This chosen vessel speaks, and it is uttered out of that treasure of one who confidently said, 'Do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?' This he pronounces who freely, under his own person, confessed the frailty of the human body:
'For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do'; and: 'Therefore I chastise and bring my body into subjection, lest, having preached to others, I myself should be found a castaway.' If he fears, which of us can be secure? If David, the friend of the Lord, and Solomon, his beloved, were overcome like men—that both their ruin might serve us for caution, and their repentance provide us examples for salvation—who does not dread a fall on the slippery way? Let there be far from your table the pheasant fowls, the fat turtle-doves, the Ionic heath-cock, and all the birds for which vast patrimonies take wing; nor for that reason think that you do not feed on meats, if you reject the delicacies of swine, hares, deer, and four-footed animals.
For these things are judged not by the number of their feet, but by the sweetness of their taste. We know that it was said by the apostle: 'Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving.' But the same says: 'It is good not to drink wine and not to eat flesh'; and in another place: 'wine, wherein is riot.' Every creature of God is good. Let those women hear these things who are anxious how they may please their husbands. Let those eat flesh who serve the flesh, whose ardour froths into intercourse, who, bound to husbands, give their labour to generation and to children. Let the entrails of those be filled with flesh whose wombs carry offspring.
But you, who have buried in your husband's tomb all your pleasures alike, who have washed away with tears over his bier your face smeared with rouge and white lead, who have taken the black tunic and dark little shoes in place of the white garment and gilded slippers you laid aside, you have need of nothing else but to persevere. Let fasting, pallor, and mean attire be your jewels; let no softness of feather-beds cherish your youthful limbs, let no warmth of the baths kindle the fresh blood of youth. Hear what the pagan poet sings in the person of a continent widow: 'He who first joined me to himself took away my love; let him keep it with him and preserve it in the tomb.' If the cheapest glass is worth so much, how much the most precious pearl?
If by the common law of nature the pagan widow condemns all pleasures, what is to be expected of a Christian widow, who owes her chastity not only to him who is dead, but to him with whom she is to reign? I beseech you, let not these general admonitions and a discourse suited to your youthful person stir up in you the suspicion of an injury, and do not judge that I write with the mind of one reproaching, not fearing, whose wish it is that you should not know what I fear. A tender thing in women is the fame of chastity, and, like a most beautiful flower, it quickly withers at a light breeze and is corrupted by a slight breath, especially where age too consents to vice and the authority of a husband is lacking, whose shadow is the safeguard of a wife. What does a widow do amid a multitude of household servants, amid throngs of attendants?
whom she should not despise as slaves, but blush before as men. Certainly, if the duties of an ambitious house demand these attendants, let her set over them an old man of honourable morals, whose dignity may be the honour of his mistress. I know that many, though their doors were shut to the public, have not been free from the ill fame of their little slaves, whom either immoderate dress or the sheen of a plump body or an age fit for lust made suspect, or the mind's swelling, secure from the consciousness of a hidden love—a swelling which, even when well dissembled, often bursts forth into public view and despises its fellow-slaves as though they were mere slaves. Let this be said out of an abundance of caution, that with all diligence you may keep your heart and beware of whatever can be feigned about you.
Let no curled steward walk beside you, no play-actor made effeminate into a woman, no venomed sweetness of a singer of the devil, no plucked and glossy youth. Let nothing of the arts of the stage, nothing soft, be joined to you in your services. Have with you choirs of widows and virgins, have the solaces of your own sex; from the morals of the maidservants too are the mistresses judged. Certainly, since your holy mother is with you and a perpetual virgin, your aunt, clings to your side, you ought not perilously to seek the fellowship of strangers, being secure in the society of your own kin. Let the divine reading be ever in your hands, and prayers so frequent that all the darts of thoughts, by which youth is wont to be smitten, may be repelled by a shield of this kind.
It is difficult, or rather impossible, for anyone to be free from the first beginnings of perturbations, which the Greeks more significantly call propatheiai, and which we, to translate word for word, may call ante-passions, because the incentives of all the vices tickle the mind, and, as it were, in the very midst lies our judgment either to reject the thoughts or to receive them. Whence also the Lord of natures spoke in the Gospel: 'Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies.'